Snow chaos on Rye Hill

As is traditional when it snows in Rye, people go out in their cars and get stuck on Rye Hill. So I went out with my GoPro and videoed it this time! I did also end up helping push five cars up hills...

Mike

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Winter in the woods

At last! The ground is frozen rock hard, and I can drive in and out with the trailer full of logs without making everything muddy... It also looks great, and we've got the bird feeder filled up again, so lots of photo opportunities:

In the wayleave, the sun doesn't reach much of the ground during December and January, so the frost builds up during cold spells:

Some nice views looking in through our entrance from the wayleave too:

Anyway, back to the bird photos. We keep a bird feeder topped up during the cold weather. I don't know how much difference it really makes in the long run, but it's nice to see which birds are around and get a few pictures. Interestingly, there have only been two types of birds coming to the feeder so far: Robins and Marsh Tits. The Robins tend to pick up seeds from the ground rather than using the feeder itself:

Though this of course means they need to keep an eye out for danger, which I guess is why this one is trying to make itself as tall as it can:

The Marsh Tits are easier to photograph than the Robins, as they sit in the young coppice nearby for a bit before coming to the feeder:

I managed to get a few of them in flight too, though this required sitting still a short distance away for quite a while, and I got pretty cold!

What's odd is that there are no Blue Tits or Great Tits so far this winter, I'm not sure why...

Mike

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Snow scenes from the woods

Yesterday I posted pictures of snow in Rye, and now here's some from the woods. I'm just going to post a selection of the ones I took, you can view the full set on Flickr (higher resolution there too).

It was pretty chilly, but we were wrapped up warm, and took along some food for the birds...

We didn't stop to sit round the camp fire...

But we did get the same photo we've taken in the past, with snow on the Sweep Wood sign:

There were a few trees that had managed to catch enough snow to bend or fall, like this Birch and Hazel:

The wayleave had something of a blockage too...

Sadly our Alder Buckthorn had also fallen over:

So we grabbed a bow saw and did some emergency coppicing so it could go back into the ground. Hopefully it'll recover...

I'll finish of with some of my favourites from the pics I took:

Mike

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Snow in Rye, Feb 2012

Ever since we moved to Rye in summer 2007, it's snowed every winter. The weather has not let us down this winter either...

This time the snow has stuck to everything it can - check out these telephone wires sagging...

and these trees and shrubs too:

The river Tillingham was frozen over:

and I just about got a picture of this Bullfinch there:

Then on to Deadmans Lane, which always looks good in the snow. This time though, the stickiness of the snow means that two branches from evergreens were down in the road:

The broadleaf trees are fine, as with no leaves they can't collect much snow:

And finally Rye Hill, which is passable if you know how to drive in snow. But of course, not everyone does!

Mike

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Even more snow in the wood

Yesterday we went up to the wood after work to get some more pictures of the snow. It was getting towards dark, so the photos are a little noisy, though pretty good for ISO3200 I think (glad I've got the DSLR for this...)
But first, here's what it was like back at home:The ducks were going from garden to garden to see if anyone had put food out for them:
You can see where they all came through a gap in the fence and went round a car to move into the next garden:
Anyway, back to the wood. We took Joy and Lauren up as well:
As it got darker I had to resort to using the flash, but it made a nice "tunnel effect":
There were a few small trees weighed down by the snow, like this holly:Here's the clearing at he junction, which we coppiced in December:
Then we got to the area we coppiced a year ago, but it was much too dark to do without the flash now:
As you can see it was still snowing while we were there, although in Rye it had turned to sleet by now.
We're certainly glad we got some logs out for a customer on Sunday, looking at the state of the wayleave!
Mike

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